It is a source of pride for outlets of satirical silliness when their stories are taken for real events. So, the Onion, "America's finest news source", must have sniggered up its sleeves when Washington police criticised it for causing panic with the headline "Congress takes group of schoolchildren hostage". The subhead "We need $12 trillion or all these kids die" and the article presented Congress as an unprincipled bunch of criminal mercenaries who would go to any lengths to solve the debt crisis.

"We can take a joke," a police spokesman maintained. "But this wasn't a very good joke." Which is what politicians said every time Spitting Image took a pop at them.

The Onion may be accused of questionable taste, but its jokes are consistently hilarious. And now UK TV viewers will get the chance to tune into the spoof channel Onion News Network, on Sky Arts next month.

The channel, which started life on the Onion's website in 2007, proclaims itself as "more pretentious than CNN, more biased than Fox". Presenters include Brooke Alvarez, who made her name breaking showbiz stories such as the first interview with Beyoncé's unborn child (via a microphone inserted into the singer's womb). In short, it is flagrant nonsense played so straight that many presenters are hired from real news channels.

But like the Onion newspaper and website, it is the headlines that are irresistible. They range from pointed satire (Obama's presidential campaign was summed up as "Black guy asks nation for change") to mocking familiar news fodder ("Drugs win war on drugs", "Study reveals: Babies are stupid") to the plain daft ("Kitten thinks of nothing but murder all day"), but are at their best when the news is so grim that jokes seem impossible. Among its headlines after 9/11 were "God angrily clarifies 'Don't kill' rule", followed by "Hijackers surprised to find selves in Hell."